Because if you don’t, you’ll miss the real joy of modern wine

A recent study by
the Wine Business Institute at Sonoma State University confirms what pretty
much everyone who loves wine already knows: Most people's taste in wine changes
over time.

The study itself is, statistically speaking, of marginal substance, never mind its academic provenance—it was based on a consumer survey of just 422 respondents. In addition, more than half the respondents were young: 28 percent were members of the so-called iGeneration (early twenties) and 30 percent were Millennials (roughly now between 22 and 37).

You may not be surprised to learn that 69 percent of the respondents stated
that their wine preferences changed over time.

What this tells us is precisely … nothing. When we're young and starting out on our wine
investigations, of course we know very little. And we know from our own
experience that most of us preferred sweeter wines at the beginning of our wine
journey.

Many wine
drinkers, young and old, retain that preference throughout their lives. Witness
the current popularity of white Moscato and mass-market red wines with big
fruit, little character and plenty of sweetness, such as Meiomi. And it's not
just wine newbies drinking such wines, either. Wine producers have known for,
like, forever, that a sizable percentage of wine buyers of all ages and
experiences find sweeter wines literally more palatable than dry wines.

For the rest of us, however, taste preferences do change. The more interesting question—one
not addressed by any study that I'm aware of—is when (and why) our preferences stop
changing.

My guess is that our taste preferences stop changing relatively early in our wine investigation. This is to say that most wine lovers proceed from sweeter to drier in taste preference; from a low tannin and acidity tolerance to a higher (or at least more accommodating) degree; and then, for whatever reasons, we find that we ultimately prefer buying certain sorts of wines (Burgundy, Bordeaux, California Cabernet, Oregon Pinot Noir) that fulfill our personal notion of wine beauty. Then we stop changing-or at least resist doing so.

But do we really stop? Twenty years ago I would have said, "Yup. Once we land on one or another
square of what we find beautiful, we don't budge." Today, I would submit no such thing.

So what's changed? Partly it's simply living in the fastest-changing era the world has
ever known, thanks to all the forces of modernity that I hardly need enumerate.

That said, two forces do deserve mention as root causes for our greater willingness and
interest in changing our preferences.

One is price. Time was that if you liked Burgundy or Bordeaux, then, hey, no problem. Prices barely budged for decades at a time. And even the most expensive such wines were still within reach of a reasonably affluent member of the middle class.

Obviously, that's
no longer true. Out of economic necessity, wine lovers are now forced to move
from their original and preferred buying patterns or, if younger, never consider
buying such newly exorbitant wines from the outset.

Second—and almost as significant, in my opinion—is the
unprecedented availability of new and different wines from places that previous
generations of wine lovers never knew existed, let alone considered buying.

Not least, these
same previously obscure wines are now of a quality and refinement never before
achieved. Think Italy. Spain. Portugal. California. Australia. New Zealand.
Oregon. Washington. Canada. Greece. And on and on.

Today we are awash in extraordinary wines, a goodly number of which are selling for what can
only be called middle-class prices. They are mighty good and we can
afford them. What's more, we can even afford the more expensive versions of
these wines, what might be called the "best in class."

Let me give you an example, an extraordinary wine that I recently was reacquainted with while
living in Spain: 2009 Pazo de Señorans Albariño Selección de Añada from northwest
Spain's Rías Baixas zone.

Rías Baixas is
not new to many American wine lovers, especially, I suspect, those of us who
long for wines that remind us of the white Burgundies we once could afford and
no longer can (or care to).

Albariños from
Rías Baixas are vaguely like a good, village-level Chablis, which is by no
means faint praise. I've toured the zone and, as it happens, also visited Pazo
de Señorans, as it's one of the most significant producers in the area.

But then along
comes Pazo de Señorans' relatively recently created "grand cru," if you will. At
$55 it's easily twice the price of most Riás Baixas wines. But that's still
within reach of many wine drinkers, if only as an occasional splurge.

Why spend the
premium? Because when you taste it, you'll know in a single sip how the wine
world has changed and why you, too, might willingly, even eagerly, embrace
change.

Selected from a
single 10-acre plot with vines nearly a half-century old, Pazo de Señorans
Selección de Añada is an Albariño like few others. It's aged in stainless steel
tanks on its lees for 30 months. (Most Albariños are released within a year of
the harvest and are meant to be drunk young.) Then it's aged in bottle for
another 12 months after that.

What emerges is a
dry white wine with a striking greenish cast and an unusual (for Albariño)
textural density delivering a lemony mineral complexity that reminds you of … wait
for it … those expensive white Burgundies many of us love and long for. It's
reminiscent of you-know-what, yet remains both distinctive and original. Not
least, it's truly equal in quality with traditional great whites.

So why change?
Because the answer is at hand on the shelves of any good wine shop or on the
wine list of many good restaurants: a world of wines like no other in history.

Nominations
anyone for other rock-your-world agents of change such as the 2009 Pazo de Señorans
Albariño Selección de Añada from Rías Baixas?

Swsor

Have you tried the Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas Albariño? From un-grafted 200 year old vines in Salnés valley trained seven feet high with trunks like trees.

Jeremy Matouk

Port of Spain, Trinidad — May 2, 2018 6:47pm ET

Bizoe wines from the Western Cape in South Africa. The Henrietta and Estalet are scrumptious examples of semillon/sauvignon blanc and syrah. Reasonably priced and very elegant. Rikus Neethling is a determined, capable and promising wine maker.

Pascal Gilliard

Paris — May 3, 2018 4:56am ET

Try the whites from Rafael Palacios from the godello grape: the Louro and the tremendous As Sortes (worth some of the best Hermitage).

Matt Kramer

Portland, Oregon — May 3, 2018 9:15am ET

To Swsor,

Thanks for your excellent suggestion. As it happens, I am very familiar with Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas Albariño. It's one of my favorites. It was one of my three Wines of the Year in my December 31, 2014 print column. And I recommended it yet again the comments section of a recent Web column as a benchmark Albariño. We are on the same wavelength! I obviously couldn't agree with you more.

Matt Kramer

Portland, Oregon — May 3, 2018 9:22am ET

Mr. Gillard: What an inspired suggestion you make in Rafael Palacios' special As Sortes wine. It easily is one of the finest dry white wines from the Galicia region of northwest Spain, made entirely from old vines of the Godello grape variety from multiple plots. I never thought of it in comparison to Hermitage blanc, however. What an intriguing notion! So the next time I have it--I'll make a point of grabbing a bottle this week--I'll keep that thought in mind. Thank you!

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